I'm looking for a super bright LED night light, to light up a room a lot more at night than the old tech night lights. I realize that the "number of LED's" is meaningless, I just want lumens.
Weren't there new LED's called "cree" or something, that were 3 or 4 watt LED's and put out quite a bit of light? I want to find a night light with something like that built in, not a "bulb" to add to some existing night light.
I'm also looking for no flicker, as this is for the room where our pet birds sleep - to keep them from getting night terrors from too dark a room. ( birds do that if it's too dark where they sleep )
If pure white light is what you want that's fine. I've also heard that this phosphor technique could also lower the efficiency output of the LEDs? who knows. If you're just looking for reliability of life use, then I guess it's fine.
All the common hardware stores sell LED night lights...
Then make up your mind (not that you started out well with the cross-posting).
A night light is not supposed to light up a room. It's supposed to provide a mild light so somebody doesn't stub their toe if they have to get up in the middle of the night. You don't want a bright light because you don't want it interrupting your sleep, but you also want it weak since otherwise your eyes have to adjust to the bright light from total darkness.
Light up a room is a different matter. It's regular lighting.
You can't get an answer until you actually define what you want.
They make fractional Watt LED night light bulb replacements. Walmart sells them.
I use a 1.5 W LED lamp at my gates and it is too bright for a night light.
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Subject: Spelling Lesson
The last four letters in American.........I Can
The last four letters in Republican.......I Can
The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats
End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2012
Remember, November is to be set aside as rodent extermination month.
A night-light incandescent lamp (less than 5 watts) has a luminous efficiency of less than 0.5%.
A lighting-class LED of less than 5 watts has luminous efficiency closer to 5% or 10%.
That would indicate that for the same number of lumens out, you probably want the LED to draw one tenth (or less) the power of an incandescent used in a similar application.
PAR-type LED spotlights are in the 3-4W power class and are way way too super bright to think about for night light use.
Wal-Mart and others sell LED night lights. I'd guesstimate that they put 10-15mA through a single blueish-white LED with a 3V drop and IMHO they are plenty bright. I tore one apart and it looks like they use series capacitance and some kind of transzorb in parallel with the LED, to start from 120V and at least somewhat efficiently limit current through the LED.
The above numbers are raw lumens/watt. A more important issue rather than raw lumens will be diffusing the LED to the point where it doesn't glare as a point source. The Wal-Mart LED night lights start with a diffused LED and then put a transluscent diffuser around it, and even then it's way more obviously a point source than the larger incandescent bulbs.
Yes you can.....................a monster LED with a big ceramic slab heatsink, controlled by a variable PWM so the illumination can be set to just what's required.
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